The paganism of the Baltic and Finno-Ugrian peoples living on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea was the principal justification for launching crusades against them at the end of the twelfth century with the aim of bringing about their conversion to Christianity.
The pagan tribes inhabiting this territory (principally, from north to south, the Estonians, Livs, Curonians, Lettgallians, Semgallians, Samogitians, Lithuanians, and Prussians) differed in language, customs, social structure, and material culture, which also implied differences in their religions, although it can be said that these were largely a complex of animistic and polytheistic beliefs, remarkably influenced by the cycle of the agricultural year. The exact nature of the pagan beliefs and cults of these peoples remains obscure due to the scarcity of relevant written evidence, and it should also be remembered that much of what we know about them derives from Christian, and therefore hostile, sources.
The Baltic peoples (as well as some neighboring Slavic tribes) shared more or less common cultic features. Natural objects such as trees, rocks, and sacred groves were venerated, certain animals (such as horses or snakes) held specific positions in local beliefs, and wooden images of deities were made. As a rule, the cult was administered in the open air; there were animal and occasionally also human sacrifices. However, these beliefs did not remain unchanged during the centuries, and surviving descriptions reflect only the situation at a particular moment.
The Lithuanian tribes remained pagan until the end of the fourteenth century, and the length of Lithuanian paganism’s survival and its contacts with Christian partners and enemies mean that more written evidence survives about it than about that of other peoples. Among the most important Lithuanian gods were Perkunas, who can be compared to the Slavic Perun and the Norse Thorr, Andai/Andojas and Teliavel/Kalevelis. Lithuanians believed in numerous other deities, for example, of cows, bees, flax, dawn, winter, lakes, and death, and also in lesser spirits. Auguries were read in the behavior of horses, snakes, and pigs. The strong cult of the horse distinguishes the beliefs of the Lithuanians from those of their northern neighbors. Blood sacrifice, for example, while swearing an oath, had an important role. Lithuanians usually burned their dead, often together with grave goods: the funeral ceremony of Grand Duke Kestutis in 1382 was the last princely cremation in Europe.
Priests and priestesses existed in pagan Lithuania. The role of women in the administration of the pagan cult and the veneration of female goddesses like Dimstapatis, the patron of mothers, cannot be underestimated. Besides the princes, the most important priests were those who were responsible for making offerings to the gods in return for victory in war. The Treaty of Christburg (1249) names lesser augurs called tulissones and ligaschones, who claimed the ability to see the souls of the dead ascending and descending and delivered funeral orations in their memory. A theory that the pagan cult in Lithuania was controlled by a high priest called Krive (mentioned in the chronicle of Peter von Dusburg) is not supported by other sources.
Lithuanian paganism owed its strength to the political success of the grand duchy of Lithuania and the relative weakness of its Christian neighbors. Paganism was even an advantage in relations to Christian neighbors: Lithuanians were appreciated as allies in war because as pagans they could perform acts that would be problematic for Christians. The attempt of Grand Duke Mindaugas to accept Christianity in 1251 as a way of acquiring political approval for his conquest of Christian territories, above all in western Russia, was a failure and provoked strong opposition among his subjects, and he was murdered by his political enemies in 1263. Paganism was actually strengthened during the reigns of Grand Dukes Gediminas (1316-1341) and Algirdas (1345-1377), and Vilnius seems to have acquired the position of the center of the cult. Strong pagan beliefs survived even after Lithuania officially accepted Christianity in 1386, and extant pagan practices were continuously described as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The pagan religion of the Old Prussian and Latvian tribes was close to that of the Lithuanians. The three main deities were Perkunos (god of thunder and fire, also sunshine and rain), Potrimpos (god of success in war and peace and of agriculture), and Piktulis (god of death). There were other deities, both male and female, for example, Curche, a creature providing food and drink, to whom the products of the first harvest, meat, honey, and other goods were sacrificed. Certain creatures, especially snakes, were regarded as sacred. Horses, war captives, and sometimes even children were sacrificed. Midsummer Night’s Eve, which holds an important place in Latvian folk traditions even today, has been interpreted as a reminiscence of the pagan feast of fertility. Its opposite was the feast of the dead in autumn (which shifted to All Souls’ Day during the Christian era), well known in Estonia.
The pagan beliefs of the tribes living on the territories of present-day northern Latvia and Estonia are less well known. Deities living in woods, waters, and other natural objects were venerated, and there was probably no hierarchy among them. According to Estonian heathen beliefs a soul could take the form of different creatures (butterfly, bird) depending on the condition the person was in: awake, sleeping, or dead. Estonians, Livs, and Lettgallians all cremated and buried their dead, often with grave goods, although funerary traditions varied according to place and period. Pagan graveyards far from a church or chapel were sometimes in use as late as the seventeenth century. No original names of Estonian or Livic pagan deities are known; the name of an Estonian god called Tharapita mentioned in the chronicle of Henry of Livonia has been interpreted as Tara avita (“Tara, help!”), the name Tara evidently being a parallel to the Norse Thorr.
There is no reliable information about how the pagan cult was administered among the Finno-Ugrian peoples. The special position given to witches, soothsayers, and sages in later folkloric traditions suggests that before the Christian conquest there may have been a group of people who acted as mediators between the deities and the pagan believers, but the sources do not allow us to reconstruct either their titles or their functions.
Reminiscences of paganism can be traced in folk beliefs of the nineteenth and in some cases even of the twentieth century.
-Tiina Kala
Bibliography
Fletcher, Richard, The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity, 371-1386AD (London: Fontana, 1998).
Jones, Prudence, and Nigel Pennick, A History of Pagan Europe (London: Routledge, 1995).
Loorits, Oskar, Grundzuge des estnischen Volksglaubens, 3 vols. (Lund: Blom, 1949-1960).
-, Liivi rahva usund. Mit einem Referat: Der Volksglaube
DerLiven, 2d ed. (Tartu: Eesti Keele Instituut, 1998).
Magi, Marika, At the Crossroads of Space and Time: Graves, Changing Society and Ideology on Saaremaa (Osel), 9th-13th Centuries AD (Tallinn: Department of Archaeology, Institute of History, 2002).
Rowell, Stephen C., Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1294-1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
World History
